


just off the key of reason

by akamine_chan



Category: Bandom, Black Cards, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Community: anon_lovefest, F/M, M/M, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/pseuds/akamine_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete spends days burrowed under the covers of his bed, listening to the white noise in his head getting progressively louder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just off the key of reason

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: mental health issues
> 
> Written for the LJ community anon_lovefest.
> 
> Title from _Hum Hallelujah_ by Fall Out Boy, single line of lyric stolen from _Spotlight (Oh, Nostalgia)_ by Patrick Stump. Excellent beta by [Green](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Green)
> 
> Prompt: Pete/Patrick, between the divorce and the stress of promoting a new band, Pete has started to spiral, and no one sees it? Will Patrick? And if he does, will it be in time?
> 
> Podficced by the wondrous Argentumlupine [here](http://argentumlupine.dreamwidth.org/16198.html)

He feels like he's standing still while the whole world jitters by at high speed, like one of those trick-motion arty music videos that were popular for a while. Except what happens to _Pete_ when the music stops?

He's finding out, now.

Pete spends days burrowed under the covers of his bed, listening to the white noise in his head getting progressively louder.

He wants to go down to the mall to get a shirt emblazoned with "I Married Ashlee Simpson And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt" but lets his mom talk him out of it.

_trick trick where r u?_

Amicable? Pete's never done a single amicable thing in his entire life. He dug his feet in and refused to sign the papers. Ashlee just sighed at him. She packed her shit up and left anyway, taking Bronx with her.

Parts of him are breaking off and there's no one left to carefully glue the pieces back together.

_trick need u_

He gets a series of tag-team texts from Mikey and Alicia, and he wants so much to go to them and let them hold him together, tie him up with twine and duct tape.

 _pete?_  
      _petepet?_  
 _u ok?_  
      _talk 2 u s_  
 _call us_  
      _u wor ry me_  
 _ur worrrying us_  
      _pete?_  
 _plz call us_

But it hurts him, their weird symbiotic blending, mikeynalicia, scrapes him raw to see them happy, and he hates himself for that.

He drinks too much coffee and wanders the city at night, feeling like a ghost.

Gabe texts him every five minutes and Pete just deletes them, unread, all 3,448 of them.

He forgets to take his meds and everything blurs together into one long _daynightdaynightdaynight_ of exhausted waking dreams. In his increasingly rare moments of lucidity, he _knows_ it can't go on like this, but he can't seem to stop it.

When he wanders, he loses himself in crowds of people, terrified of being alone. He remembers the last chain of events in only the vaguest sense—how his isolation led to a Best Buy parking lot and he doesn't want to go there ever again. He can't.

He doesn't know where he wants to go, but it's not there.

At some point he wakes up because Gabe is poking him in the side with his shoe; he's spread out on Gabe's lawn, covered with dew and shivering. He tries to stumble away but Gabe tackles him, sits on him, makes him shower and eat and frantically texts someone when he thinks Pete isn't looking.

_trick find me_   
_im lost_

Gabe won't let him leave, and people trickle by to stare at his shaking hands and sallow skin. Mikey shows up and lets Pete mumble into the soft skin of his neck, holding him tight. He closes his eyes, blinks and Mikey morphs into Alicia, heavily kohled eyes sad and clear.

Mikeynalicia look into him, they _see_ him. They reach out for him, but he's too far away and lost. They slip away when he isn't looking.

_trick i'm full of new regrets_   
_and old ones_

Bebe calls and all her words are all backwards; Gabe calls and all of _his_ words are upside down. Pete tries to pin his words down on paper, but they keep sliding away and the tears drip and make everything runny and waterlogged.

It's way too late to pull up and Pete just lets himself go.

_tricktricktricktrick_

When he wakes, the sun is shining and the world outside his window looks washed clean. Patrick is lying next to him in his bed, looking golden in the light. Pete knows this is just a dream, has to be a dream. A combination of bad brain chemistry and alcohol and whatever other pills he managed to find, but he doesn't care. He curls close and listens to Trick breathe.

-fin-

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] just off the key of reason](https://archiveofourown.org/works/414616) by [argentumlupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumlupine/pseuds/argentumlupine)




End file.
